Gattaca Blogged Response

Workshop III -- Gattaca Blogged Response

Does genetic screening and manipulation as presented in Gattaca evoke a new eugenics? Does this scenario seem credible given current scientific trends? How are class, race and gender explored in Gattaca?


Eugenics have been existing long ago in human history advocating the improvement of human hereditary traits to create healthier and more intelligent humans to save society’s resources and lessen human suffering by means of different kinds of human intervention, such as ‘selective bleeding’ in early age, ‘birth control’ led by the state as ‘eugenics-based program’ in recent decades like in Singapore where female university graduates, who are considered as “the intelligent”, were offered grants towards hospitalization during labour, housing and children’s education, while “the less educated non-graduated” females/ parents were encouraged to sterilize after their first child for their “inferior” or “less intelligent” genes. Eugenics is always tainted with racism and classism since it is perceived as a cultural choice of what should be determined as “desirable” human traits and “beneficial” to the society in terms of race and social class.


There is also a coercive genetic screening in China for couples who wish to marry and have a child to prevent certain genetic diseases carriers pass the diseases on their children. Such eugenics has evolved along with the advanced technology of vitro fertilization, and then genetic engineering, resulting in liberal eugenics which supposed to be less associated with racism and classism, but more focus on using reproductive and genetics technology to reduce the role of chance in reproduction, for example, eliminaing the chance of getting congenital disorder, to improve human beings.


Gattaca evokes a new eugenics shares some similarities with Liberal eugenics of reducing the chance of undesirable genes heredity, but more than that, with not only physical characteristics such as skin, hair and eye colour and congenital diseases, it takes the extreme that even personality and behaviour can be determined through genetic manipulation. The society in Gattaca is generally dominant by a genetic determinist ideology in which genetic essentialism is accepted as the true state of the world. Such new eugenics in the movie has barely negative eugenics like coercive sterilization or abortion disencourges reproduction of “bad” genes but only positive eugenics of which preliminary genetic screening allows human’s offspring conceived in a way that they are designated “fit” to the society. But by the same token, such genetic determinism shapes belief that a person’s innate genetic makeup exclusively determines his/her personality, behaviour and physical appearance, in turn one’s destiny. It is used as a mechanism to screen out inferior genetic profile or the designated genetic “unfit” individuals to the society, for example, Vincent as the “in-valid”. Thereby, in Gattaca, a new class structure has arisen based not on social status or skin color but on one’s genetic profile. In the movie, Vincent is a while male born in a middle-class family (since his family can afford to pay for the genetic enhancement technologies) but suffers from genetic discrimination because he’s a genetically unenhanced, a “god’s child”. Then again, how a society and who decides a person’s genetic profile an inferior or ‘unfit’?


It seems that in Gattaca, issues of social class, race and gender are wiped out, and the DNA is the only factor that remains and determines your class in society. It does not matter what your gender and skin color is, as long as you have the right genes, the superior genes, you can do what ever you choose to. For instance, all the employees working in Gattaca wearing matching black suits making men and women alike. The costuming in Gattaca make the gender boundary blurrier, and suggests homogeneity and uniformity, probably implying a homogenous society and loss of diversity resulted from the new eugenics of genetic essentialism. The DNA profile becomes an identity card, and its ultimate factor in determining one’s access to the world, and how the world might accept you or deny you. For example, a job interview of Vincent is only a blood test to determine whether he fits the job; he could only work as a janitor at Gattaca before he obtains his “borrow ladder” status; and after he’s genetically enhanced, he works as a navigator to arrange offworld expeditions. However, I think discrimination against the genetically unenahnced in Gattaca is akin to racism or classism in contemporary society.


With current technology, I don't believe the genetic selection technology is advanced enough to extract all the genetic defectiveness in a non-born child. Although “Gene therapy” nowadays can be used to treat people who already have a genetic disorder or to correct genes in sperm, eggs, or embryonic cells, still it has few more decades to go before our knowledge of human genetics is mature enough to combine with the gene therapy to produce a “genetic designer baby”. I see glimpses of possibility, and perhaps, in the future, technology could advance to a point where genetic manipulation on human is possible and will be widely accepted. And questions like would people take this choice or will they shy away from it as it is a counter-religious action where in our society, birth is ingrain into life as it is suppose to be a natural process with minimal science intervention as possible, and consequences of unrestricted human-gene therapy in a society as illustrated in Gattaca still remain unanswered.